Webinar: Resilience Strategies That Build Trust in Supply Chains

Supply Chain Resilience, defined for right now

Resilience is an organization’s ability to withstand, adapt, and recover from disruption so customer promises are still met and performance targets are protected. At an industry level, it is interconnected partners coordinating through global shocks so products keep moving and customers keep trusting.

The twist today is the environment itself. What used to be one-off events has shifted into an era of permanent disruption. Leaders can no longer plan to bounce back to a stable normal. There is no single normal. The operating model must be designed to flex continuously.

Common sources of disruption

Why resilience is getting renewed focus

Leaders face nonstop volatility from trade and tariff shifts, logistics swings, economic pressure, cybersecurity threats, climate events, and policy changes. These forces compound into frequent, large-scale shocks that last longer than any playbook assumed. The cost of standing still shows up in missed deliveries, rising overhead, customer churn, and accelerated margin pressure.

Why resilience is getting renewed focus in these turbulent times

The new role of supply chain: trust builder

In a world where everything changes, delivery commitments are the most visible proof that a brand can be trusted. Every accurate ETA, every complete order, every clean return is brand equity. Supply chain has become the front line of customer loyalty, not just a cost center.

The hard tradeoffs leaders must face

Resilience, efficiency, and sustainability do not always align. Nearshoring may cut risk but raise unit cost. Extra inventory can cushion shocks but ties up cash and risks waste. Faster transport can save an order but increase emissions and spending. Teams need honest, cross-functional conversations about which levers to pull for the outcomes that matter most right now.

Trade-offs between resilience, efficiency, and sustainability

How disruptions are impacting costs, compliance, and traceability

How to measure resilience when prevention is invisible

Executives rarely reward disasters that never happened. Make the value visible with what-if metrics and avoided-loss scenarios.

• If a Wi-Fi outage halted scanning for 6 hours, what would the labor and service impact be?
• If a key supplier raised prices by 12 percent next month, what orders and margin would be at risk?
• If a compliance rule changed packing documentation overnight, how much rework would be required without real time traceability? 

Quantify the cost of inaction, then compare to the investment needed to harden the process.

Four strategic priorities leaders are elevating

Four strategic priorities from the RFgen leadership survey

1) Smart inventory management

The risks: stockouts, overstock, stale counts, slow returns, poor demand signals, and cash trapped on the floor.

What works:

• Real time item visibility from receiving to shipping with mobile data collection and scanning.
• Cycle counting in smaller zones more often, not once a year. Monthly or even weekly counts surface errors when they are still easy to fix.
• Returns processing that is barcode-driven so capital returns to saleable inventory fast.
• Exceptions dashboards that flag low coverage, aging lots, and mismatch between system and shelf. 

Impact in practice: moving from manual key entry to scan-based transactions can take inventory accuracy from unreliable to above 95 percent, which unlocks confident planning and fewer emergency expedites.

Inventory risk breakdown and the jump in accuracy for real-time data

2) Optimized warehouse operations

The hidden waste: walking. Picking on one side of the building, printing on the other, labeling in a third spot turns simple orders into hour-long tasks.

What works:

• Digital workflows that guide pick paths based on slot location and travel time.
• On-device printing and labeling at the point of work.
• Task interleaving so staff pick, replenish, and cycle count on one optimized route.
• Real time progress visibility so supervisors rebalance work before a line backs up. 

Outcome: fewer footsteps, faster turns, cleaner shelves, and more orders shipped with the same headcount.

Cutting warehouse waste with digital workflows

3) Manufacturing efficiency and shop-floor visibility

The risks: blind spots on work-in-process, machine downtime that lingers, and bottlenecks discovered after the schedule is already broken.

What works:

• Mobile capture at each operation to time-stamp WIP and track yield and scrap.
• Real time machine and line status surfaced to production and customer service, so questions get answered immediately.
• Alerts that trigger when takt time slips or when a queue builds beyond threshold. 

Outcome: faster problem resolution, dependable promise dates, and better use of skilled labor on value-add work instead of hunting for status.

Manufacturing challenges and real-time shop floor visibility

4) Financial and cost management

The pressures: rising labor, transportation, and holding cost, plus tariff and compliance shocks.

What works:

• Digitize repetitive transactions to reduce touches and errors.
• Free capacity by removing non-value tasks like duplicate keying and long walks to printers or terminals.
• Use exception-driven management to prevent premium freight and overtime before they happen. 

Outcome: fewer unplanned costs eat margin, and the organization buys time to make smarter, data-backed tradeoffs when the next shock hits.

Tackling cost pressures through digitization and freed capacity

How to get leadership buy-in for 2026 resilience investments

Where automation makes the biggest resilience impact

Automation and mobile data tools do more than speed up tasks. They help create a reconfigurable, adaptable network. When orders change, flows can be rerouted. When a facility moves, digital workflows move with it. When a supplier slips, the system can prioritize alternatives without re-inventing the whole process. Think Rubik’s cube, not concrete.

Working with legacy systems without stalling progress

• Assess viability: is the vendor and stack viable for the next five years.
• Prioritize visibility and flexibility gaps: start where blind spots and rigidity cause the most pain.
• Layer tools, do not rip and replace by default: extend your ERP with mobile data collection and scan-first workflows that write cleanly to the system of record.
• Prove ROI with avoided cost: hours saved per week, orders shipped per labor hour, cycle count time reduced, premium freight avoided.

Working with legacy systems for visibility and flexibility

Treat your supply chain like a product

Shifting from cost center to product mindset unlocks continuous improvement. Use a good-better-best roadmap.

• Good: digitize the highest-volume transactions in receiving, putaway, picking, shipping, and cycle counting.
• Better: add role-based dashboards, exception alerts, and returns visibility.
• Best: orchestrate end-to-end with predictive inventory coverage, constraint-aware scheduling, and dynamic labor allocation. 

Iterate, measure, adjust. Release new versions the same way product teams do.

The three anchors to guide every decision

1. Visibility across suppliers, inventory, WIP, and orders.
2. Traceability that survives audits and proves compliance across borders.
3. Flexibility to reroute work, change pack rules, and reassign labor in minutes. 

Focus on one anchor if that is all the budget allows. You will still gain ground on competitors.

Practical next steps you can act on this quarter

• Map the process from raw material to customer delivery. Circle every place where you do not have real time truth.
• Convert one paper-heavy workflow to scan-first mobile data collection and benchmark errors and speed before and after.
• Move from annual to monthly cycle counts in zones. Track accuracy and correction time.
• Build three what-if scenarios and the cost of each. Take the avoided-loss story to leadership.
• Pilot responsive pick paths and on-device labeling to cut walking.
• Establish a single north star metric for the next six months, such as on-time in full or orders per labor hour, and align tradeoffs to that goal.
• Start an uncomfortable conversation. Name the tradeoffs among resilience, efficiency, and sustainability so decisions are explicit.

Actionable steps to futureproof your operations

Turning turbulence into traction

Disruption will not slow down. The businesses that win will be the ones that make volatility routine, not remarkable. Equip teams with real time visibility, traceability that stands up to scrutiny, and flexibility baked into daily work. Treat the supply chain like a product, release the next version, and keep moving. That is how resilience becomes an everyday advantage.